3 ms·

They've buried the lede under cute terminology, like "wimpy nodes" and "storage class memory (SCM)". The main thrust of the paper is that under certain assumpt

by gojomo 12y ago

They've buried the lede under cute terminology, like "wimpy nodes" and "storage class memory (SCM)". The main thrust of the paper is that under certain assumptions, flash/solid-state/etc memory ("storage class memory") may already be competitive with spinning hard disks or tape for long-term archival storage of bulk data.

kelanis 12y ago
The "wimpy nodes" was a bit too cute for my tastes, but storage class memory is actually a fairly common term in the research community. The "wimpy nodes" was meant to be a coat-tail grab for the FAWN project, which we (disclaimer: I am one of the authors) heavily drew from in addition to the Pergamum project.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. As an anecdotal data point, I didn't recognize the storage class memory term, even though I'm quite interested in these topics, sometimes reading related research papers. The abstract would have been more helpful had it alluded to the definition, for example "…of storage class memories (SCMs), such as flash memory, has been…". Similarly, the term isn't defined on first use, and even following the footnote which strongly suggests definition/discussion of the same topic elsewhere ([21]), that particular term doesn't appear in the referenced Rosenthal "Keeping Bits Safe" article. (Now I know, but I'm still not a fan of the term. At these levels of abstract analysis, it's all 'memory', and it's all being considered for 'storage', so storage class memory lacks vividness/contrast.)
  - wmf 12y ago
    SCM tends to be an abbreviation for "whatever comes after flash, even though we don't know what that will be".
  - vicaya 12y ago
    The industry term is NVM, which refers to all classes of non-volatile memory, typically high density ones. How do you like Crystal Ridge?
    - gojomo 12y ago
      NVM makes slightly more sense to me than SCM. Crystal Ridge? (If you mean the nursing facility, still hoping for a more Rainbows End arrangement.)

by gojomo 12y ago

kelanis 12y ago

The "wimpy nodes" was a bit too cute for my tastes, but storage class memory is actually a fairly common term in the research community. The "wimpy nodes" was meant to be a coat-tail grab for the FAWN project, which we (disclaimer: I am one of the authors) heavily drew from in addition to the Pergamum project.

gojomo 12y ago
Thanks for the clarification. As an anecdotal data point, I didn't recognize the storage class memory term, even though I'm quite interested in these topics, sometimes reading related research papers. The abstract would have been more helpful had it alluded to the definition, for example "…of storage class memories (SCMs), such as flash memory, has been…". Similarly, the term isn't defined on first use, and even following the footnote which strongly suggests definition/discussion of the same topic elsewhere ([21]), that particular term doesn't appear in the referenced Rosenthal "Keeping Bits Safe" article. (Now I know, but I'm still not a fan of the term. At these levels of abstract analysis, it's all 'memory', and it's all being considered for 'storage', so storage class memory lacks vividness/contrast.)
- wmf 12y ago
  SCM tends to be an abbreviation for "whatever comes after flash, even though we don't know what that will be".
- vicaya 12y ago
  The industry term is NVM, which refers to all classes of non-volatile memory, typically high density ones. How do you like Crystal Ridge?
  - gojomo 12y ago
    NVM makes slightly more sense to me than SCM. Crystal Ridge? (If you mean the nursing facility, still hoping for a more Rainbows End arrangement.)